Annex F – Parental Responsibilities And Rights

If you have parental responsibilities for a child, you are
expected to fulfill certain legal duties in respect of looking
after them. You are required to:

safeguard their health, development and welfare;

give them direction and guidance in line with their stage of
development;

maintain personal relations and direct contact with the child
on a regular basis, where they are not living with you; and

act as their legal representative.

2.Parental rights enable you to fulfill these duties. If you
have parental rights then you are entitled to:

have a child live with you or otherwise regulate their
residence;

control, direct or guide their upbringing, in a manner
appropriate to their stage of development, for example, deciding
how the child should be educated;

maintain personal relations and direct contact with them on a
regular basis if they are not living with you; and

act as the child’s legal representative.

3. A child’s mother automatically has
PRRs in
relation to their child.

4.A father will have
PRRs
if:

when the child was conceived the father was married to the
child’s mother or subsequently marries them;

the mother and father jointly register the child’s
birth (this applies to births registered on or after 4 May
2006);

the mother and father complete and register a Parental
Responsibilities and Rights Agreement; or

a court so orders.

5. Others can ask the court for
PRRs to be
given to them.

6.One example is a parental order made by a court under section
54 of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008. In this
case, the intended parent or parents in a surrogacy arrangement
seek to take over
PRRs from
the child’s legal parent(s).

7.The surrogate mother is automatically considered as the legal
parent of a child even where she is not genetically related to
them. The surrogate mother’s husband is also automatically
considered to be the legal parent of a surrogate baby where he was
married to the surrogate mother at the time of her artificial
insemination or when the embryo or sperm and eggs were placed in
her. When a parental order is granted to the intending parents,
(those who commissioned the surrogacy arrangement), the surrogate
mother and father stop having
PRRs for
the child. A parental order made by a Scottish court is registered
in the Parental Order Register maintained by the Registrar General
for Scotland.